Noyes, a career diplomat, seems a surprising pick.
I was fully expecting a hardened Leftwing ideologue like Obama’s former Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), Anne Richard, or possibly the insider Lawrence Bartlett, a bureaucrat, who wouldn’t have a long learning curve.
And, then another likely choice could have been Mark Hetfield of HIAS (formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), but he would have to take a hefty pay cut if selected and confirmed.
I expected Anne Richard to be back joining the others of Obama’s orbit populating the O-man’s third term.
Indeed the lobbying arm of the refugee industry was pushing hard for someone with “robust experience” in the complex workings of the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) so they can immediately get to work to bring in as many refugees as possible before Trump, or someone with Trump’s concerns about mass immigration, returns to the White House.
Know that President Trump never filled this position and he likely would have not been able to get someone (who might do any good for us) confirmed.
Julieta Valls Noyes
Of course, it is possible that Ambassador Noyes is experienced with the USRAP, but I’ve never heard of her. And, maybe that is the point—Biden wants to get someone past the Senate confirmation that looks and sounds reasonable.
LOL! But that can’t make the refugee pushers happy unless they plan to manipulate her as they did George Bush’s recess appointment Ellen Sauerbrey who they came to love.
Here is Foreign Policy on Biden’s expected choice to head PRM:
Biden to Tap Career Diplomat as Top Official on Refugee Policy
U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to name three new nominees to senior diplomatic and foreign aid positions, including the top State Department official on refugee issues, a White House official told Foreign Policy.
Julieta Valls Noyes, a veteran career diplomat, is expected to be nominated as the assistant secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration—a senior post that could play a key role in the Biden administration’s efforts to reverse Trump-era sharp restrictions on the number of refugees entering the United States. Noyes, the acting director of the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute and former ambassador to Croatia, is a first-generation American whose parents entered the United States as refugees from Cuba.
[….]
If confirmed by the Senate, all three nominees would join agencies widely perceived as hollowed out and damaged by politicization and mismanagement under former President Donald Trump.
The State Department’s top post overseeing refugee issues was left unfilled during the Trump administration’s four years in power, though lower-level officials assumed the job in an acting capacity.
Several senior career diplomats in the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration who defended refugees were reassigned or temporarily sidelined during a shake-up in 2018 as the Trump administration worked to slash refugee admissions to record lows.
Refugee lobbyists at the Refugee Council USAwanted someone with “deep understanding” of “complex issues.” See their letter to Biden here.
Nothing less than “robust experience” is acceptable. (I want to barf every time they use the word “robust!”)
Refugee advocates had been urging Biden for several weeks to swiftly nominate someone to the population, refugees, and migration assistant secretary role. In April, John Slocum, interim executive director of Refugee Council USA, a nonprofit advocacy organization, sent Biden a letter obtained by Politico urging him to pick an assistant secretary “who has a deep understanding of the complex issues surrounding forced displacement, refugee resettlement, and other forms of humanitarian protection.”
She is the daughter of Cuban refugees and we know most Cubans sensibly loathe communism and loved Donald Trump in 2020.
She also has strong (we might say robust!) feelings about the Islamic State as well. Here in 2014:
“The financing of this barbaric organisation allows it to continue its operations. What we have to do is degrade its abilities and ultimately to destroy it.”[7]
Hmmmm! Sounds like something Donald Trump would say.
If confirmed, the biggest problem she could have is to avoid being rolled by the career bureaucrats and their contractor pals***.
As soon as the contractors begin to weigh-in, we will have a better idea of who this woman is and how she might run the program as Biden promises it will soon be on steroids to admit 125,000 refugees beginning on October first.
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the nine contractors that have monopolized all refugee distribution in the US for decades.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris andlobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
Two of the contractors, the USCCB and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service are also paid to find locations for the Unaccompanied Alien Children.
At this very moment they are all out scouting for new, fresh territory in which to place their refugee clients. See Winchester, VA.
If so, tell them to put their money where their mouths are and follow Governor Abbott’s lead.
By the way, Abbott was the only Republican governor in the nation to support President Trump’s efforts to reform the Refugee Admissions Program. Trump’s concept was to give the states and local governments a greater say in the placement of refugees. Of course, as we have been saying the ‘children’are not refugees.
Gov. Greg Abbott orders Texas child-care regulators to yank licenses of facilities housing immigrant kids
AUSTIN — Escalating his showdown with President Joe Biden, Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday ordered state child-care regulators to yank licenses from facilities that house minors who crossed the state’s southern border without papers and were detained.
Currently, 52 state-licensed general residential operations and child placing agencies in Texas have contracts with the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement to care for undocumented immigrant children.
ORR contracts with about 200 facilities in 22 states.
Within three months or so, Abbott’s move apparently would force them to stop serving unaccompanied minors because the facilities must have state licenses to qualify for the federal contracts.
The effects are unclear: Nationwide, there are now about 17,000 unaccompanied children, according to data provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As of May 19, 4,223 of those were being housed in state licensed facilities or child placing agencies in Texas, according to the state Health and Human Services Commission.
Though it’s unclear how many are kept in unlicensed emergency sites – such as the one that just closed in Dallas or the site at Fort Bliss Army base in El Paso that can hold up to 10,000 unaccompanied migrant children and teens – Abbott’s move potentially could force relocation of up to one-fourth of the children nationwide.
For more than a dozen years (that is the time I’ve been following the US Refugee Admissions Program), I’ve watched the Open Borders propagandists and their media lackeys sell the idea that those mostly teenaged illegal alien border crossers that began flooding our southern border in massive waves during the Obama administration are legitimate refugees.
Legal (whether they are legitimate is another question) refugees are selected abroad (supposedly able to prove they are being persecuted) in a process that begins with the United Nations, the US State Department admits them with screening in advance by the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and Human Services provides funds for many of their initial needs.
Those nine federal contractors*** I’m always talking about are contracted and funded by the US State Department to settle them in your towns and cities and those nine receive additional grants and contracts from ORR to supposedly care for them for an initial three month period.
The ‘children’ we see being flown around the US, the ones who caused that recent uproar in Tennessee,here, came to our border, crossed it illegally and were then turned over to ORR and therein I believe is where the confusion began.
I believe, with no hard proof, that the Open Borders lobby wanted the ‘care’ of the children placed in the Office of Refugee Resettlement to further advance the idea to the media and to you, that the ‘children’ are legitimate refugees who would ultimately be entitled to all of the benefits legal refugees receive and thus ultimately acquire citizenship.
Coming back to bite them….
For all of these more than a dozen years I’ve watched this, the big nine, because they clearly want to see the most third worlders admitted to the US as possible, have supported the influx of UACs.
In my early years this was a surprise to me as I assumed the contractors would put the legal refugees they were committed (and contracted!) to care for ahead of any concerns for illegal aliens, but they don’t.
This year their lack of discernment has come back to bite them as Biden himself recognized (briefly) that funds for legal refugees were being consumed by the expensive care being provided to the illegal alien kids.
Here at the Detroit News, in an article about the “decimated refugee infrastructure” we learned that indeed money for legal refugees was being shifted to the illegal ‘children’:
When Biden initially announced he would keep the Trump-era refugee admissions cap of 15,000 — before backtracking amid widespread outcry — he hinted that resources needed at the border were being drawn from the refugee resettlement program.
“The problem was that the refugee part was working on the crisis that ended up on the border with young people,” he said in April. “We couldn’t do two things at once.”
Funding for the Unaccompanied Children Program, which manages custody of child migrants at the border, and the HHS portion of the refugee admissions program, which reimburses states for refugee-related expenses, are indeed part of a single appropriation within HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement and can be internally redirected.
Of course, this money shortage won’t last long as the Biden team will simply allocate billions more (and probably already has) to accelerate the process of changing America by changing the people.
Unforeseen consequences of years of conflation….
But, perhaps an unforeseen result of years of selling the media and the public on the false notion that the UACs (Biden says we aren’t supposed to call them Unaccompanied Alien Children) are legal refugees is that furious tax paying Americans are going to (already are!) lump the illegal alien teens in with legal refugees making it much harder for the contractors to sell communities with the idea of welcoming more legal refugees.
In other words, most Americans think too many are coming no matter what category they fall within.
For those of you who have gotten this far in this morning’s post and are thinking that you don’t give a damn about the bureaucratic details and are saying to yourselves—we are admitting too many migrants of all stripes while paying for them out of our wallets—stop reading now.
Otherwise, know this, and keep reading.
Even our so-called political leaders don’t know what they are talking about and are adding to the confusion, or dodging and weaving.
In my post on Fridayabout the Tennessee uproar, the conflation issue raised its ugly head as politicians scurried to look like they were doing something to push back against the Biden migrant dump.
Good for two writers to begin to unravel the mess.
Green apparently fell for the “conflation.” Editor: I sure would like to see a little better preparation by a Tea Party endorsed candidate. Some of the best experts in the country on refugee resettlement are right there in his own back yard. Here is an idea! Call them before looking foolish.
A lack of legal understanding by a lawmaker is of concern.
Jumping on the bandwagon is US Rep. Mark Green who apparently thinks he is doing something with a bill that will go nowhere in Nancy Pelosi’s House.
For politicians, it is the outrage that matters!
Pat Hamsa writing at Tennessee’s Daily Roll Call calls out Green for adding to the confusion by referring to the UACs as refugees!
Is Mark Green Conflating Illegal Aliens With Refugees?
It’s anybody’s best guess why Green’s explanation of his bill, H.R.3500, doesn’t match what he’s telling folks it’s supposed to do.
Green’s press release about his new bill, “Leads Fight to Block Refugee Resettlement Without State Consent”states in part:
“Last week, in the dead of night, unaccompanied migrant children were flown into Tennessee without our approval or consent. I am alarmed that the Biden Administration would use taxpayer resources to transport refugees into Tennessee without transparency or coordination with state authorities. This overreach and secrecy has to stop.”
In a recent interview with WRCBtv Chattanooga, Green said that he drafted the bill in response to what happened in Chattanooga and that “this bill would mandate permission of the state before they move illegal migrants to Tennessee.”
Then why does he call them refugees in the headline to his press release?
I am amazed at the amount of real research a writer at a local Tennessee paper put into this story attempting to unravel the conflation confusion. It is so rare to see links to solid information to back the reporting.
From Wyatt Massey at the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Massey points out that Governor Lee is on record supporting more legal refugees to Tennessee while acting outraged by the arrival of the ‘children,’ even as during his tenure, the Chattanooga facility for the ‘children’ was licensed.
Refugee, migrant shelters for children referenced in Tennessee debate are separate under federal rules
Controversy in the past week about the movement of migrant children through Tennessee and into a Chattanooga shelter licensed by the state in May 2020 has led to confusion about the immigration status of the children housed in Southeast Tennessee and those video recorded exiting a plane in Chattanooga.
Gov. Bill Lee opposed Trump’s efforts to give states a greater say when the feds placed refugees in a state. He wants more legal refugees, but is distancing himself from the very unpopular drop-off of UACs, so it is to his advantage to make a distinction between the two programs.
Gov. Bill Lee has previously been criticized for his strong words against President Joe Biden administration policies related to the unaccompanied minors after announcing in 2019 the state would continue resettling refugees.
[….]
The governor faced criticism from some conservatives at the time for continuing to accept refugees.Lee cited his Christian faith, calling it a “moral obligation” and a “biblical mandate” for the state to remain in the program.
This is a separate program from federal efforts to care for unaccompanied children who, after they cross the border, are initially in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. ICE and CBP have three days to move the children away from a temporary border shelter to a shelter run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. Children stay in ORR shelters, like the one in Chattanooga, for about a month while caseworkers locate and vet a sponsor, usually a relative, to take custody of the child until immigration proceedings can begin.
[….]
On May 19, WRCB aired video of children getting off a plane at the Wilson Air Center to be transported to shelters or placed with sponsors throughout the region. The video sparked outrage from members of Tennessee’s congressional delegation and Lee, who said he had declined a Biden administration request to house unaccompanied minors in the state.
However, documents from the state show Lee’s own Department of Children’s Services licensed the shelter near downtown Chattanooga to house “unaccompanied minors” in May 2020.
On Monday, the Times Free Press asked Lee why his administration approved the license for the facility, conducted monthly inspections and issued monthly reports if the governor was then raising concerns about a lack of transparency over migrant children and saying he declined a federal request to house unaccompanied children.
Although the Times Free Press asked specifically about the migrant children, the governor said the Times Free Press was conflating unaccompanied minors with refugees.
Keep reading. Massey even digs into the finances of the contractor, the Baptiste Group from Georgia, that is housing the UACs in Tennessee. Good work!
Now, after all that, if you made it this far, I suspect you are saying:
Conflation or not there is just too darn much poverty, cultural conflict and potential crime and terrorism being brought into the country and I don’t want to pay for it!
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the nine contractors that have monopolized all refugee distribution in the US for decades.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris andlobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
Two of the contractors, the USCCB and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service are alsopaid to find locationsfor the Unaccompanied Alien Children.
At this very moment they are all out scouting for new, fresh territory in which to place their refugee clients. See Winchester, VA.
Biden Wants to Prepare for Future Surges of Unaccompanied Minors
Okay, that news is bad enough, but it gave me a chuckle to see how they are spinning the present surge of illegal alien kids with the arrival of Biden in the Oval Office—just happens from time to time, move along, nothing to see!
It is just a normal cycle and we must be better prepared by spending more of your tax dollars for housing for the mostly teenaged boys. That apparently is the talking point coming from this White House.
If you missed my post the other day about planes landing in the night in Tennessee, check it out here:
One good thing about the Tennessee expose’ is that the secrecy angle has brought the Administration’s movement of the ‘children’ to the media’s attention, but it has been going on for years.
We see that WRCB-TV in Chattanooga has an update. I’m happy that they are trying to get more accurate information on the Tennessee situation by using data at the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, but I have a bone to pick with them about their headline. Here is my complaint:
The Unaccompanied Alien Children are illegal aliens NOT REFUGEES.
They aren’t even legitimate asylum seekers unless, and until, they file an asylum claim.
WRBC-TV:
What happens next in the refugee resettlement process of migrant children?
It’s been more than a week since four planes carrying migrant children landed in Chattanooga.
Similar operations are happening across the country. Some of those children are being cared for in a group home, but hundreds of others left the airport on a bus.
Channel 3 learned what happens next in the refugee resettlement process, and the number of children relying on sponsors in Tennessee.
From October to March, 66 unaccompanied children were released to a sponsor in Hamilton County.
While the federal government looks for a sponsor, children are taken to one of about 200 facilities across twenty-two states. A child therapist says this process can take a toll on the children involved.
There are about 200 facilities across the country where unaccompanied children are being housed.
One of them is in Chattanooga, which can house between 30 and 50 minors.
As of May 13, there are around 20,000 kids in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, nationwide.Their average stay is 31 days.
More on that shortly…
But, back to the Pew articleI mentioned above. Get ready for another federal agency for the ‘children.’
The Biden administration wants to create a permanent federal workforce to provide housing for unaccompanied migrant children during surges like the one that began in January and continues to overwhelm authorities.
Mayorkas is not wrong. Surges have occurred periodically, but Trump did get a handle on the problem toward the end of his presidency.
“We all know that surges arise periodically,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said during a congressional hearing earlier this month. “They arose in 2019. They arose in 2016, in 2014 and well before that. Migration is a very dynamic and fluid challenge that we have faced for many, many years.”
Mayorkas said during the hearing that DHS is exploring options, but the agency did not respond to a Stateline request for more detail.
Currently, the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is part of the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, houses the children by relying on state-licensed contractors. But Republican governors in Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming recently blocked contractors in their states from taking in the children, claiming that the unaccompanied kids would displace those already in state foster care or limit states’ ability to make new placements.
However, there currently are no federally funded long-term foster care providers for unaccompanied minors in any of those five states.
The Pew article goes on to say that Senator Rob Portman said the previous administration had no surges, but I am sad to say he is wrong. They might not have had a surge at the end of Trump’s time in office, but they sure did have a surge earlier as you will see below.
I know it isn’t what we want to see, but Donald Trump presided over the largest surge year so far.
For perspective, in 2003, when ORR became the agency in charge of UACs, there were 8,000 arriving illegally that year.
And, so here is my big question:
Since over 70% of the ‘childrenare ages 15-17, what happens to them when they age-out as they turn 18? Tens of thousands of Trump’s UACs likely already aged out. Where are they? Why does no one ask? Are they simply loose in your towns and counties? I think so!
And, see that the Left-leaning Migration Policy Institute is critical of the Biden team’s handling of the mess. Are they helping set the narrative that an entire new bureaucratic structure is the only answer to the border crisis?
U.S. housing shortage presents new challenge for refugee resettlement
When the White House announced earlier this month that it would increase the number of refugees granted admission into the United States this fiscal year by four times the previous target, to 62,500 people, reversing course from President Biden’s initial plan, immigrant advocates applauded the decision. Yet groups working to help resettle refugees are now facing another new challenge: finding housing for new migrants.
Rajbhandari — hmmm! a little dissension in the ‘humanitarian’ industry?
Sheryl Rajbhandari, the founder of Heartfelt Tidbits, a Cincinnati-based organization that has helped resettle over 50,000 [their website says 40,000 but who is counting!–ed] people in western Ohio since 2008, worries that refugees will be pushed into inappropriate housing.
The government-approved resettlement agencies*** that sponsor refugees and provide services for the first 90 days will often place them in public housing with high crime rates.
Those agencies “want the money for each individual they resettle. So it’s like ‘We don’t really care if we move people,’” she said.
[….]
Once refugees are in the United States, a resettlement agency is responsible for finding and paying for housing for them for an initial period. In a real estate market driven to new highs by the pandemic, finding that housing has become increasingly difficult.
To be clear, the “resettlement agency,” one of the nine federal contractors*** doesn’t use its own money to pay for the initial housing, it uses your money that is passed through federal grants and contracts to their coffers.
Low-income and potentially dangerous housing may expose already vulnerable families to crime, and it can also restrict those families from getting the resources they need, Rajbhandari argued.
“If it’s a high-crime area, folks don’t want to go into that area,” she said. “So folks who might be able to provide assistance don’t feel comfortable driving into places where there are people being shot at and drugs are being dealt.”
Not so subtle pitch for more of your tax dollars to go to refugee resettlement.
The concerns over housing come as organizations working with refugees deal with two challenges: a sudden increase in the cap for people eligible for resettlement and limited government resources in place to help them.
[….]
…there are currently 35,000 refugees who have already passed security checks and have been cleared for entry into the U.S., and there are another 100,000 in the pipeline.
Independent resettlement organizations around the country are optimistic about reaching the 62,500 target, however difficult to achieve. The challenge now will be finding them appropriate housing.
Miry Whitehill, the founder of Miry’s List, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that assists families with the resettlement process, said this is a problem that goes deeper than just housing.
The cost of resettlement loans and plane tickets means many refugees enter the United States already owing money they must repay.
“Something that I think is really important to mention here is that refugees are starting out in debt,” Whitehill said. “Every refugee, they’re required to sign a financial contract agreeing to reimburse the resettlement agency for the cost of their flights.”
Whitehill isn’t telling the whole story on those airfare loans.
IOM bags at airports are the tip-off! Refugees Arriving!
The resettlement agency does collect the loan money from the refugees (when they can get it!), but it was your money, your tax dollars flowing through the United Nation’s International Organization for Migration that shelled out the money in the first place.
When one of the big nine does collect the airfare loan reimbursements, they get to keep a quarter of it for themselves, some years resulting in over a million in extra petty cash. Judicial Watchattempted to find out exactly how much was collected, but got the runaround.
I digress….the takeaway from this story is that Biden’s promised high number of refugees will be placed in crime ridden slums adding to the tensions already evident in most US cities unless you, the taxpayers of America stop being so greedy and spend more money on nicer housing for New Americans (because the US has run out of our own poor people).
Of course,the other option, but never discussed, is to not ‘welcome’ more refugees at this challenging time.
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the nine contractors that have monopolized all refugee distribution in the US for decades.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris andlobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
Two of the contractors, the USCCB and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service are alsopaid to find locations for the Unaccompanied Alien Children.
At this very moment they are all out scouting for new, fresh territory in which to place their refugee clients. See Winchester, VA.
